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Battles - Battle of Sharqat, 1918

The final action fought on the
Mesopotamian Front, the Battle of Sharqat saw British regional
Commander-in-Chief
Sir
William Marshall secure control of the Mosul oilfields north of Baghdad.

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Activity on the Mesopotamian
Front had been muted in the months leading up to the action fought at Sharqat.
However
Lloyd George's government in London ordered Marshall to remove as much
remaining Turkish influence from the region as possible in the weeks immediately
prior to the anticipated Turkish armistice, as had earlier been achieved in
Palestine.

Thus
Sir Alexander
Cobbe was commanded to lead a combined Anglo-Indian force from Baghdad on 23
October 1918. Its progress was remarkably swift: within two days it had
covered 120km, reaching Little Zab River, where it expected to meet and engage
the Turkish Sixth Army operating under Ismail Hakki Bey.

However Hakki determined to
retreat his army once it became clear that Cobbe's force was endangering his
army's rear. Retreating therefore to Sharqat a further 100km to the north,
he nevertheless came under attack by Cobbe on 29 October 1918.

Within a day Hakki surrendered
to Cobbe, despite the fact that his lines had yet to be breached by the combined
Anglo-Indian force. However with the Ottoman Empire in disarray an
armistice was both desirable and imminent, and was consequently agreed within a
matter of days.

During this last battle in
Mesopotamia 18,000 Turk soldiers were taken prisoner by the British, whose
losses ran to a little under 2,000 men.

Mosul itself was peacefully
occupied by an Indian cavalry division two weeks after the Sharqat encounter,
falling to the British on 14 November 1918.

Click here to view a map
charting operations at the time of the fall of Baghdad.